The SEC’s status continues to take a hit in the “Best Places to Work” rankings, a survey that evaluates job satisfaction among federal agency employees – hovering at #19 this year out of 22 (note the agency was 5th in ’07) and being named the 4th worse place to work among mid-size agencies. Here are the ’12 rankings; here’s a Washington Post article. The SEC ranked near the bottom in many categories including 18th for leadership; 17th in pay and dead last in performance-based rewards and achievement. The best it did was 13th in the work/life balance category…

A few weeks ago, the GAO issued this report on the cost-benefit analysis conducted by those federal agencies charged with implementing Dodd-Frank. The OMB has cost-benefit guidance but the SEC and some of the other independent agencies are not required to follow OMB’s guidance – although they attempt to follow it in principle. As noted in this Compliance Week blog, the GAO’s review of 54 Dodd-Frank related rules found that some regulators did not consistently follow key elements of the OMB guidance and did not evaluate their chosen approach compared to the benefits and costs of alternatives.

Webcasts: “Dissecting the Quarterly Earnings Process”

Recently, there have been a large number of earning release snafus – some highly publicized, some not. And then we have these findings from the recent NIRI 2012 Guidance Survey:

– 88% of respondents provide some form of guidance (either financial, non-financial or both), compared to 90% in 2010 and 93% in 2009
– 76% report providing financial guidance compared to 81% in 2010 and 85% in 2009
– 44% provide non-financial (broad market) guidance in 2012, a decrease from 48% reported in 2010 and 55% reported in 2009
– For those that do not provide guidance, the majority (60%) have never done so

Tune in tomorrow for the webcast – “Dissecting the Quarterly Earnings Process” – to hear Dave Lynn of TheCorporateCounsel.net and Morrison & Foerster, Ron Mueller of Gibson Dunn, Ginny Fogg of Norfolk Southern, Robert Lindsey of Dell and Eileen McCarthy of Jet Blue talk about the latest developments in managing the quarterly earnings process.